


This Cold World Has Burned Me Out

by w_k_smith



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain Marvel (2019), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Carol and Steve lost their powers, Gen, I wanted to write them interacting, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), also pie, the Gauntlet was destroyed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:00:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22111486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/w_k_smith/pseuds/w_k_smith
Summary: After defeating Thanos, Carol and Steve meet up in a diner and have a heart-to-heart.
Relationships: Carol Danvers & Steve Rogers
Kudos: 11





	This Cold World Has Burned Me Out

**Author's Note:**

> This is a weirdly complicated AU for such a short fic, I'll admit. Maybe I'll write a sequel one day.

Carol comes across Steve in a diner in a little town in rural Vermont. He’s sitting in the back booth, wearing a sweatshirt that was much less loose on him last year, and a Yankees cap that doesn’t stop Carol from recognizing him. She has only known Steve himself for a handful of years, if you don’t count the biographies and history reports she paged through in school, but she knows his type. He’s a haunted warrior. He’s old and weathered on the inside, if not the outside – has the outside ever meant anything about Steve Rogers? Carol has seen that look on a dozen planets, with a dozen species. She wishes she could keep it from breaking her heart.

She sits down with him, because she can’t exactly ignore him, but hesitates before speaking. She isn’t sure what to say. They aren’t _that_ close. And she hasn’t had contact with any of the Avengers since they defeated Thanos for the second time.

But Steve starts talking like they’re two friends who meant to meet each other here. She’s surprised when he picks up the conversation with such easy rhythm, but he has lived a life as strange as hers, and maybe this is something close to normal for people like them.

“Never?” Steve says. He laughs skeptically. “You’ve never even tried it?”

Carol shakes her head, and takes a long gulp of her coffee. There is nothing like coffee in the rest of the galaxy. Nothing else tastes burned, but in a _comforting_ way. “I didn’t really grow up in a house where people baked.”

Carol doesn’t have to think for long at all to come up with the best meal at the Danvers house. Her happiest memories are of when her mother was working late, and her father was passed out in the den, and Stevie and Joe Jr. kept watch while she fished a few bills out of Dad’s wallet. Smothering their giggles until they were halfway down the block, the three of them raced each other to McDonald’s.

Stevie, who died wrapped in burning jet at a test site even Carol has never seen, once fit an entire Big Mac in his mouth. Joe Jr., who never woke up after he downed a bottle of whiskey and drove off a bridge in ’83, gave himself fake wounds with ketchup and didn’t care if he was the only one who laughed at the joke. Carol liked to drag her fries through her ice cream cone, and sometimes feels like she’s still racing to McDonald’s, running in the dark and not sure whether she’s ahead or behind.

Carol clears her throat. “And that’s not the kind of thing you can find in Knowhere or the Shi’ar Empire. So, no, I’ve never had apple pie.”

“Then we’re getting apple pie,” Steve says.

Steve and Carol bite into their slices of fresh hot pie in unison. The crust is flaky, and melts on Carol’s tongue. The pie smells hot and sweet, but the apples are also a little sour when she bites them. Steve catches her eye, but her mouth is full, and she makes a firm OK sign as she chews and swallows the folksy culinary symbol of the U.S. of A.

Steve eats his slice in a few quick bites. Carol is only halfway done by the time he is reduced to scraping crumbs off his place with his fork.

“I thought you might be worried about losing your girlish figure these days,” she says around a cheekful of crust.

He freezes when she says it. She didn’t mean to broach the subject, and just made a stupid joke without thinking.

She doesn’t like to think about what has happened to them, though the trauma itself isn’t really the problem. Carol has been through a lot of pain. She has had a long time to train herself to think of every failure, dead friend, and lost love as the little tears in muscles that led to a stronger, healthier, whole. On a good day, she can make herself believe that with 70% sincerity, maybe 75%. On a bad day, she can usually set her jaw and just get on with her shit.

Today, Carol is tired. She doesn’t have the literal urge to sleep right now, but her body is slow, her motivation is running dry, and it isn’t all due to the loss of her powers.

Her mind doesn’t even conjure the full memory when she flashes back to it. All she gets are snapshots: her hand reaching for the gauntlet – Steve having the same idea and lunging at the same time – rainbow light – bright light – no light at all – face down in the roiling ground.

Carol has dealt with memory loss before, and knows when she is just _tired_.

Steve sets his fork down and picks up his coffee mug with movements that are far too deliberate.

“Sorry. Do you want to talk about it?” Carol asks.

Steve makes a quick gesture with his free hand. _Nah, it’s fine, no, thank you_.

“You should take me up on it,” Carol says. She picks at her pie, and hopes it looks casual. “I don’t usually offer to talk about problems. Most of the time, I get by with punching.”

“I don’t want to…burden you,” Steve says. “This isn’t like the years after the snap. You’re the only one going through the same thing.”

“Exactly.”

“Do _you_ want to talk about it?”

Carol shuts her mouth.

“I’ve led a lot of support groups,” Steve says.

She crosses her arms, and leans back in the booth. “I don’t think I’m experiencing anything you aren’t. My whole life is changing, for the umpteenth time. I was upset at first. I’ll adjust eventually.”

“Has it happened yet?”

Carol doesn’t want to lie to Captain America – or, the former Captain America. It would be a betrayal of God, country, the flag, and the apple pie in front of her.

“I’m tired,” Carol says.

“What are you tired of?” he asks.

“I’m just tired,” she says. “I have been in a lot of battles, in a lot of different places. I went into all of them for the same reason. When we were fighting for the gauntlet, I was ready to fight to the death, to give up my life if I had to. Then my biggest edge got ripped away. And I’m not going to sit here and whine about it, because that won’t do anyone any good, but I’m also not going to act like things haven’t changed. I’m staring down a long road of bringing nothing but bare hands to every knife fight, and thinking about that makes me feel pretty damn tired.”

Steve makes eye contact as she speaks, as their coffees both go cold, but he doesn’t say anything right away.

“Sorry for swearing in front of you,” she says, trying to beat back the lull in the conversation.

“You are forgiven,” he said, with a straight expression.

“That’s obnoxious. And don’t say you don’t agree with me.”

She watches him think. His gaze moves to a meaningless spot on the black window next to their booth.

“I don’t feel different,” he says.

If he were anyone else, she would call him a liar. She can’t help but look over the scrawny man in front of her and marvel at the _idea_ that he wouldn’t feel different, if only because none of his clothes fit anymore.

“Do you think there’s a level,” he asks, “where the two of us are who we always were on the inside? I could never shake the thought I was just some kid from Brooklyn who kept getting in over his head. An evil man with the worst intentions brought us here. But is there a way we’re what we’re meant to be?”

She’s shaking her head before he finishes speaking. “With all due respect, I don’t think anyone is _meant_ to be anything. I don’t believe in fate.”

“But you do believe in making the most out of what you have.”

“It’s how I survived this far. Superpowers or no superpowers.”

He smiles. “I’m glad to hear that.”

He pushes his empty dishes away, and says “thank you” to the waitress when she scoops them up. Carol picks up her fork and hunches over her plate to make it clear she hasn’t given up on her pie. The slice is room temperature now, but the congealing syrup is still sweet, and the apples taste good even if they don’t really taste like apples.

“You know,” Steve says, “I came to this town for a reason.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“There’s a white supremacist group here. A branch of the Sons of the Serpent; I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them. They’ve been stockpiling weapons, winning all the wrong elections, paying off or intimidating all the officials who are supposed to stop terrorism when it brews in their own backyard.”

Carol sets her fork on her now-empty plate. “Why else do you think I’m in Vermont?” She lowers her voice. “Even if it wasn’t the off-season, there’s better foliage in this neck of the galaxy.”

Steve crosses his arms. “I am very happy I ran into you, Carol Danvers.”

“And I wouldn’t mind hanging out for a while longer, Steve Rogers.”

**Author's Note:**

> I pulled all that stuff about Carol's backstory from her 616 counterpart. She really did have a brother named Steve.


End file.
